by Becca Bloom
Jake packed his sandwiches into the hamper, nestling them on top of the drinks and snacks his mom had packed inside for his latest tour group. (In typical Sylvia fashion, there was enough for an army.) Looking up at me, he said, “I know that the last thing you want is more adventure…”
There he was, reading my mind again.
“…but I think you’ll like my next trip. It’s not quite as extreme as my normal tours.”
I loved it that he thought I was brave enough to go on one of his adrenaline tours, but while I’d like to think I could handle anything more than the swings at the kiddie playground, I just wasn’t that brave.
“I certainly hope it’s calmer,” said Sylvia, her shoulders going tense. “I won’t sleep all week knowing that you’re climbing that horrible mountain.”
Adi, Jake’s twin sister who was gracious enough to let me stay at her apartment during my vacation, hadn’t slept the night before knowing he was leaving this morning.
“Chimborazo isn’t a horrible mountain, Mamita,” he said, setting the hamper by the door and joining his mom at the stove. Draping his arm over her shoulders and resting his cheek on the top of her head, he said, “This group is full of seasoned climbers, and Marlon is coming to help me. He’s made it to the top of Chimborazo more than anyone else in the country. We’ll be safe. I’ll call you as soon as we get back down to the base.”
Letting go of his mom, and checking his watch, Jake said, “I really need to go.” He lifted the hamper like it weighed nothing and stepped back when Tia Rosa burst through the swinging door, evoking gasps from everyone in the kitchen.
“Why you paint hair purple?” Abuelita plunked her bony hands on her bony hips and glared at her older sister from across the kitchen.
Fluffing her curly poof of unmistakably lavender hair, Tia Rosa said, “Fernanda say is beautiful. She say is ‘Cool’.”
“You listen her? Fernanda have green hair. Of course she say that!” huffed Abuelita.
Now, I liked Fernanda, but I wouldn’t go to the teen for styling advice. Not when she had the habit of matching her hair to her nail polish on a weekly basis. Lately, she’d been favoring neon colors. Her mother, Martha, wasn’t too pleased with it, but the bright pop of color was a nice break from the solid black ensemble she always wore.
Sylvia blinked several times as she took in Tia Rosa’s makeover. “Ma,” she said, clutching Abuelita’s arm, “you shouldn’t be so hard on Tia. No matter what color her hair is, I think she looks lovely. Don’t you think she looks lovely, Jake?”
Jake’s biceps bulged as he shuffled the large picnic hamper from one hand to hug his trendy aunt.
I shook my head, dragging my focus away from his muscled physique to the conversation at hand before the blush spreading over my body reached my face and turned it beet red for all to see. Yep, it was definitely time to lay off the romance books.
“A rose with any other … color of hair … would be just as sweet as Tia Rosa. I think you look amazing. Now, I need to go. I have a van full of tourists waiting for me.” He leaned down and kissed his elderly aunt on the cheek, then whisked out of the kitchen.
Tia Rosa grinned, her cheeks dimpling and her owlish eyes larger than life through her pink, horn-rimmed glasses.
“What you think, Jessica?” Tia Rosa asked, fishing for more compliments.
“I think you look fantastic,” I said honestly. Hey, Mammy dyed her hair bright orange, and she rocked it. Besides, the timing was perfect for Tia Rosa. I added aloud, “A new look for a new business owner.”
Just then, Adi burst through the screen door at the back of the kitchen. She balanced a sewing machine, a tool box, and several sample sizes of fabric draped over her armload. I rushed over to help her before she dropped something important.
“Did Jake leave already?” she panted, searching for her brother.
“Just,” I said.
“He’d better call. I hate his job. If anything happens to him, I’ll kill him,” she grumbled, her shoulders sagging.
Kind of anticlimactic, but I understood her worry.
“You couldn’t make another trip?” I teased to take her mind off her twin brother while I grasped the toolbox between two hands. It was heavier than it looked.
“This is the last one. You won’t even recognize my room, Jess. I can walk around my bed like a normal person now!” Adi exclaimed.
“Hallelujah!” said Sylvia, thrilled as any mother would be that her daughter had finally calmed the chaos in her room.
“No more sequins hanging from your ceiling fan?” I asked.
Adi shook her head and rolled her eyes. “You’ll have to find a new hiding place from madmen with guns.”
I shivered. Jake had been right about me not looking for more adventure. Why would I when it found me easily enough? “Your messy room saved me, but I’m hoping the drama in my vacation is over. From here on out, it’ll be nothing but scenic waterfalls and fluttering butterflies for me.”
“And doughnuts!” pronounced Abuelita, jabbing me in the arm with her pointy finger lest I dare forget to feed her raging sweet tooth.
Adi shifted the sewing machine in her arms. “This is heavy. I’m going to put it in my new studio,” she said with a happy glint. “All I have to do is paint the walls and polish the wood floors, and I’m ready for business. I have a new client booked and a dress to deliver next week! It’s not much, but it’s a start.”
Tia Rosa clapped her hands and bobbed up and down on her toes. “I so exciting!”
“You so purple,” mumbled Abuelita.
Adi kissed Tia Rosa on the cheek. “I like it. A new do for a new you,” she said.
Tia Rosa shuffled over to me, standing so close I could smell the chemicals clinging to her fuzzy, violet curls. “And a new partner for the business if Jessica stay. I no charge rent for one month!”
Abuelita scoffed at us and threw a towel down on the counter for dramatic emphasis. “You both too nice. You be out of the business in minus one month!” she declared.
Tia Rosa ignored her skeptical sister, looking up at me with puppy dog eyes that made me feel too guilty to say “no.”
She added, “Is perfect. My building next to restaurant. You close to friends. You make the doughnuts in the shop, Adi makes the beautiful dresses above, and you take the apartment above the dresses! We help each other and we be happy!”
And then, as if Tia Rosa hadn’t made it difficult enough to refuse, she added, “It was dream when you little girl, yes? You live the dream!”
I looked to Adi for help, but all she did was shuffle the load in her arms and say, “Sounds perfect to me. Now, can we go next door so I can unload all this stuff in my studio before I lose feeling in my arms?”
That so did not help me out, but at least Adi had offered a distraction.
Maybe Abuelita was right. I was too nice.
Chapter 2
I was on vacation, not planning a life-changing move to Ecuador. It was fun helping Tia Rosa plan the menu, layout, and decor of the shop and, while I would have loved to stay long enough to see the images I’d carried in my mind for as long as I could remember become reality, she didn’t need me. Not really. I’d shown Fernanda and Martha how to make the dough and several glazes. I could always test out a few more recipes to pass on when I got back to Oregon.
“Let’s go,” said Tia Rosa, already pushing the swinging door separating the kitchen from the dining room of the restaurant. “I show you the progress. The walls, they all done. Today, the men change the ugly floor.”
Sylvia remained behind with the staff she’d recently hired while Abuelita, Adi, and I followed Tia Rosa over to her building. Hammers pounded and shovels scraped in the dust-filled shop. It was hard to imagine how the shop would look as gutted out and incomplete as it currently was.
Running upstairs through the door on the side of the future doughnut shop, Adi and I deposited the last of her sewing supplies in her studio. She twirled in the middle of the
room, basking in a goal realized in the morning rays of sun pouring through the curtain-free windows.
“You know,” she said, pausing mid-spin, “if you do decide to stay — and I’m totally not pressuring you or anything — we could set up a little dog park for Lady on the terrace of the building. She could have her own grassy area, dog house, and I’ve already asked Jake if he could build her an obstacle course to keep her entertained…”
I looked at her askance. “You’ve been spending time on Pinterest, haven’t you?”
She laughed, locking up her apartment and heading down the stairs with me in tow. “It’s addictive. If I did half the things I save there, I’d have a different braid in my hair every day and an apartment to make any designer on HGTV proud, using nothing but repurposed shipping crates and used toilet paper rolls. And don’t even get me started on the food! Who knew there were so many ways to eat kale?”
“Don’t forget how you’d win Project Runway with nothing but paper clips and an old t-shirt,” I added.
Adi snorted. “Oh, honey, I don’t need Pinterest to do that.”
I would have laughed had she not been completely serious. If I had an ounce of the confidence Adi had, I’d … I’d … well, whatever I did, it would be awesome because I wouldn’t stop until it was amazing. I grimaced at myself. Even in my head, I wasn’t brave enough to admit what I wanted.
“You got pensive all of a sudden,” Adi held the door at the bottom of the stairs open.
“I like to think,” I said, shrugging my shoulders to keep her from asking any more questions. The answers scared me.
Fortunately for my spineless self, Abuelita and Tia Rosa were talking with the one construction worker who spoke some English out on the sidewalk.
“Where Lady?” he asked, leaning against a shovel.
Lady, since her appearance on television the week before, had become quite the puppy celebrity. Every time I took her out for a walk, people stopped to pet her and feed her treats — quite a change from the month before when I’d found her homeless and hungry on the street. Lady loved all the attention. As did Abuelita, who offered to take her out more often and spoiled her worse than I did.
“I’ll bring her by later,” I promised.
“How the wall?” asked Tia Rosa, pointing to the bricks separating the customer area from the bakery.
I could see the blush even under the layer of dust covering his skin. “Is good. Is dry. We fix floor now.”
Abuelita snorted. “Only estúpido lean on wet, brick wall. You no charge my sister for extra work fix you mistake?” she demanded more than asked.
“No, we no charge,” he answered quickly, taking a step away from Abuelita and holding his shovel between them like a barrier. (She had that effect on people.)
Sure enough, two other guys chipped away at a large crack next to the wall where the bricks had fallen a few days before. We had all heard it next door. Sylvia had thought it was a thunderstorm, Abuelita had thought it was the nearby volcano, Tungurahua, belching more ash into the sky, and I had thought it was an earthquake. I swear I felt the ground move.
Fortunately, it hadn’t been any of the above, but I had to agree with Abuelita on one point: The new guy who had leaned against the wall before the mortar could dry should have known better than to send hundreds of pounds of solid bricks tumbling down. At least it was the floor that had cracked and not his head.
Tia Rosa pulled some mints out of her pocket. “Is much dust. This help. You need more water for to drink?” she asked.
“We okay. Gracias, Tia Rosa,” he said, backing inside the shop to join his crew before Abuelita could say anything else to him.
Tia Rosa waved for us to follow her. She stood in the middle of the open space which would be the front of the shop. Pointing up at the ceiling, she said, “Here go the chandelier. It sparkle when afternoon sun come through big windows. The walls I paint the blue of the Caribbean Sea. The name of the shop I paint with thick, black letters. Is that right, Jessica? I no forget nothing?”
“It sounds perfect,” I said, breath escaping me. Tia Rosa had asked for ideas, and now she was creating my dream pastry shop — the one I was supposed to open with Mammy as soon as I grew tall enough to see over the counter.
Tia Rosa grinned. “The doughnuts here,” she turned and spread her arms out in front of the newly-repaired wall. “Three glass case fill with delicious, colorful doughnuts.” She smacked her red lips together in anticipation as she moved her finger to point down. “The floor shining white.”
Abuelita tsked. “You waste money fix floor. You no open on time for big ceremony event.”
Adi sighed. “It is too bad this place won’t be ready for the ceremony this weekend. A lot of important people will be in Baños, and they’d love your doughnuts.”
Abuelita countered, “You no waste time fix floor, it be ready.”
I only knew about the ceremony because the whole town talked about it. They were celebrating one of their teachers who had gone on to have an illustrious career in education and had decided to return to Baños as the new director of the high school. I tried to remember any such rejoicing over the hiring of a new school principal in Portland, but came up blank. Only in Ecuador would they party for what was considered in most parts to be a thankless job.
“This floor so ugly. It no combine good with the decorations,” argued Tia Rosa, taking a step toward Abuelita.
Too busy thinking about the gala, I’d phased out the argument blooming between the two sisters. I looked down at the floor. The tiles were thick like the concrete foundation below them and the golden-yellow, burnt-orange, and avocado green stripes, though faded over the years they’d adorned the floor, were just as Tia Rosa described them — ugly.
Shrugging her shoulders, Abuelita insisted, “You waste the time and the money.”
Tia Rosa ignored her, continuing, “Above, I buy … how you say … where the teacher write in the schoolroom?”
“A chalkboard,” I answered, certain it was the word she searched for. My dream doughnut shop had a chalkboard, but I didn’t remember sharing that detail with her. Maybe she’d seen pictures of Portland’s famous VooDoo Doughnuts during her Pinterest search. I’d always thought it was a cool touch to a trendy shop.
Clucking her tongue and waving her finger at me, she said, “Is it. I put chalkboard and you write with pretty chalk in pink, green, purple—”
“Like you hair? Is that what happen? You take purple chalk to beautiful salon and you say, ‘I want my hair same like this?’” teased Abuelita.
Tia Rosa bunched her lips, scrunching her face into a ball, and faced her sister. They looked like a fluffy poodle and a miniature doberman with their hackles up.
“You jealous, Bertha. You hair boring black. You boring.”
“I boring? You the one jealous, Rosa! I start successful restaurant. You buy this building for to compete with me.”
Pushing Abuelita with her plump tummy, Tia Rosa said, “I open doughnut shop, no restaurant. How I compete with you, eh? No is the same.”
“Jessica no stay. She leave in one month, and what you do?”
I breathed deeply and joined the fray while Adi stood off to the side to watch the show. Abuelita and Tia Rosa had developed the bad habit of dragging me into many of their arguments, and I was tired of it. “You can leave me out of this. Martha has already given her notice at the bakery so she can help Tia Rosa make doughnuts. And Fernanda wants to chip in while she’s still on vacation from school. You don’t need me.”
Abuelita pointed at Tia Rosa. “She fail. She too nice.”
Tia Rosa slipped her hand into mine and squished it against her. “I no need you, Jessica. Is true and I know it. But I want you stay. I see you happy here. Bertha agree. Is true, Bertha?”
Abuelita grumbled something to the floor. She was a testy old woman, but I could tell from the way her arms hung down from her shoulders and how she refused to look at me that Tia Rosa was right.
/> Releasing my hand, Tia Rosa nodded at her sister.
I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I hugged Abuelita just like I would hug my own Mammy. She stiffened in my arms at first, but her resistance only made me chuckle. It was like hugging a porcupine, but before I pulled away, I felt two firm pats on my back.
“You stay only if you want stay,” said Abuelita, her dark eyes boring into me, reading all my self-doubts. I envied her bravery and toughness. I wasn’t like her at all.
“Tia Rosa!” the worker shouted from the other side of the wall. “Tia Rosa, we find something,” he insisted.
The panic in his voice gave us pause. We looked at each other.
“You scare babies,” Abuelita accused, charging across the room, pausing to see if we followed her as she reached the wall. Hmm, who was scared now?
The worker blocked our path. His helpers huddled together, standing as far away from the hole in the floor as they could get, their eyes wide and hands busy kissing their crosses as they prayed.
A shiver ran through me.
He continued, explaining, “We dig for to fix crack. Do good job. But crack go down and down. We dig and dig. The dirt too soft.”
Tia Rosa, the optimist of the group, asked hopefully, “You find a treasure box?”
The worker shook his head gravely and stepped to the side. We leaned forward.
Abuelita said, “Is no treasure, Rosa. Is dead body.”
Chapter 3
I heard Sylvia call my name, but my feet refused to budge.
“Jess, it’s the phone. It’s for you. Someone else claiming to have information about your uncle’s plane crash.”
I glared at Abuelita, who didn’t look the least bit repentant.
Sylvia stopped beside me and I could tell the moment she saw what we saw. Sucking in her breath, she said into the phone, “Jessica cannot come to the phone right now. Please try again later,” and pushed the End Call button before she got a reply.